


A Lesson in Biding Your Time

by middlemarchingfic



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7787125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarchingfic/pseuds/middlemarchingfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"On the fourteenth day, his patience taxed well beyond its limits, Ambarys kicked the door after Galmar shut it in his face and was immediately arrested."</p><p>Ambarys Rendar spends two nights in the Windhelm jail. Ulfric pays him a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson in Biding Your Time

_4E 191 - Windhelm_

Galmar Stone-Fist was an insurmountable wall of muscle and sinew barring the door to the Jarl’s ready room. He had his thick, meaty arms folded over his puffed up chest and his bearded chin thrust outward, to better enable him to scowl down his nose at his underlings, Ambarys supposed. Galmar glared at him and said, “What do you want, little elf?”

 _What do I want? I’d be arrested if I told you,_ Ambarys thought. _And Malacath take you, fetcher, you know my name._

He put on a diplomatic smile, gestured past Galmar’s bulwark of a shoulder, and said, “To keep my appointment with the Jarl, if it’s all the same to you. We have an appointment.”

He had no realistic expectations of being let through, but his politic demeanor was crucial to the pantomime of a negotiation he and Ulfric had been playing at since the Warriors Festival. Ambarys knew his role; the impudent elf with delusions of egalitarianism, treading with false courtesy upon his Jarl’s graciousness, blind to the important matters of ruling a hold that, naturally, kept the Jarl out of conference with his subjects. Ambarys’s role was to know his place, and never get that meeting, and he bore the insult intrinsic to this charade with as much equanimity as his pride could suffer.

As it turned out, his pride could suffer very little when the alternative meant his kith and kin would freeze to death.

Galmar Stone-Fist remained unmoved. “Your Gray Quarter business will have to wait until matters of state are settled. Jarl Ulfric is in deep counsel with his thanes and won’t be disturbed for the likes of you. Now get out before I have the guards throw you out.”

Then Galmor heaved the door shut in his face, and Ambarys was left standing in the Palace foyer with his simmering outrage--and a pair of menacing Stormcloak soldiers, whose attempts at surreptitiousness as they followed him out into the howling winter gale failed miserably. They hounded his steps as far as the Gray Quarter, but no further. No respectable Nord entered that thrice cursed district unless they had to.

So it went for two weeks. On the fourteenth day, his patience taxed well beyond its limits, Ambarys kicked the door after Galmar shut it in his face and was immediately arrested.

The Stormcloaks were not gentle with him. One of the guards gave him a broken nose and a split lip to go with his poorly lit jail cell, but hot blood on his mouth and chin didn’t stop Ambarys from shouting abuse at his assailant’s back as he left and took the only torch with him. “Yes, hurry back to your master, you brainless slack-jawed n’wah. What would you be without boots to lick!” The last light from the torch vanished around the corner, and Ambarys heard the resounding clang of the dungeon door being slammed shut. Alone in the dark with his blood and broken nose, Ambarys slumped onto his cot and stewed.

By the next evening he thoroughly regretted his vitriol, and when the morning after arrived, dread had congealed into a pit in his stomach. He had never been afraid of the Nords, or of Ulfric, since their disdain for his people more often than not manifested itself through malign neglect rather than outright violence. But after his second night spent parched and hungry in that unforgivingly frigid cage, he wondered if their plan was to leave him in the dungeon to starve. For certain values of being mollified, being dead was a valid condition.

A guard finally brought him a tankard of water late in the evening. Ambarys drank from it greedily.

Glowering balefully at him through the bars, the guard informed him, “You are a lot of trouble, elf.”

Ambarys narrowly avoided choking on the water when he laughed, a small, wet noise in the back of his throat. If they were expecting an apology, they weren’t going to get one. He swallowed down one last mouthful of water and dragged his filthy sleeve across his mouth. “Here,” he said and handed the tankard back to the guard through the bars. “To avoid adding theft to my criminal resume.”

The guard took it and said, “You’ve got a visitor.” Then he left. Ambarys leaned against the bars and waited, wondering with regret if it was Malthyr come to beg for his release. But the silhouette he glimpsed at the end of the corridor sent a spike of fear up his spine.

He recognized Jarl Ulfric by his slow, purposeful gait, the clink and swish of rich fabric against heavy chainmail, and at last by his face half caught in shadow as he came into view at the end of the dungeon’s corridor. He moved forward, slow and bearlike, until he stopped outside Ambarys’s cell and looked in at him. Ambarys fought to keep his eyes cool and flinty. He had no way of knowing whether the facade was effective or not, and Ulfric’s expression betrayed nothing, hard and inscrutable. They stared at each other in silence. Ambarys wondered if he was still expected to observe the usual niceties required of a subject to his Jarl, but Ulfric saved him the hassle by being forthright.

“You’ve caused quite a stir in my court the last few weeks,” he said, voice low and resonant. “Galmar has called you an agitator and thinks peace with your kind would be best served by cutting off your head as an example to the others.”

He let his words hang heavy in the air, and Ambarys could say nothing, his throat dry from both neglect, and fear. Ulfric shrugged mildly and went on. “I confess I see the wisdom in his perspective, but I am not so hungry for bloodshed that I need to see it running in the streets of my city. Nevertheless, I suspect he is right on one account, and so I beg a question of you.” He leaned in towards the bars, fractionally. “Are you an agitator, Ambarys Rendar?”

Yes, Ambarys thought. But he didn’t wish to die, not yet, and so swallowed the word before his mouth could shape it. It felt like the coward’s way out, but if being a coward meant being alive to watch Malthyr’s formidable browline crease with worry over their finances each evening after closing time at the cornerclub, then, this time, he would gladly be a coward.

“No,” he said. Ulfric’s eyebrows quirked dubiously, and Ambarys reached deep for his courage before he pressed on. “But I am cold, and hungry, like everyone else in the Gray Quarter. Cold and hunger breed desperation, and desperation isn’t polite and courteous. Surely you can see that.”

“What I see is a man intent on spreading civil unrest when his city is already mired in it,” Ulfric said. “If your kind are cold, mend the cracks in your walls with your own hands. If you are hungry, feed yourselves. Windhelm is not a wet nurse for the weak-hearted.”

The Jarl withdrew a large iron key from a cloaked pocket. He pinned Ambarys with his gaze, then jutted his chin out. “Go stand at the back of your cell.”

He waited until Ambarys had complied, backing away from the bars until his spine was pressed flush against the cold, damp cell wall. Ulfric picked up the heavy black lock that secured the cell door, fitted the key into it, and gave it a twist. The lock sprang free, and Ulfric grasped the latch with one gauntleted hand, heaving the heavy gate open as though its weight meant nothing to him. He stepped to the side, fixed his eyes on Ambarys, and gestured towards the wooden door leading out of the dungeon.

Ambarys didn’t move. His fingers could find no purchase on the wall behind him, but he struggled to grip it, to secure himself in place. “What is this?”

Ulfric’s flinty stare betrayed nothing. Then, he looked away to pocket the key. “Your freedom. It is not without its price, however, but now that I better know your character, I feel reasonably certain of your willingness to pay it.” The Jarl looked up at him again, and this time, his upper lip curled in the smallest of snarls. “Get out of that cell before you try my patience past its limits.”

He hated himself for his obedience; beyond that, he hated his trembling limbs that betrayed the depth of his fear as he took step after wooden step forward. He hated himself for startling like a spring fawn when Ulfric slammed the cell door shut behind him, and for each, fretful glance he stole over his shoulder at the Jarl as he left the dungeon. Ulfric herded him like a hunted beast into the Palace foyer, and the only thing that could overshadow the fear and shame that dogged his heels was the surge of joy he felt at the sight of poor Malthyr, who waited for him by the doors, wringing his only winter cap between his hands.

Malthyr lit up at the sight of him, and rushed forward to grab him in a rough, impulsive embrace. Shattered as his pride was, Ambarys dropped his forehead against Malthyr’s shoulder, and let himself be held, in spite of the snickering of the Stormcloak guards around them.

He heard Ulfric say, “I hope your time spent as our honored guest has given you a fresh perspective on Nord hospitality, Ambarys.” To the guards, he added, “Get them out of here.”

His back stiffened at the clink of boots approaching them across the flagstone floor. Malthyr tightened his grip on Ambarys’s shoulders. “No need,” he said, his voice reedy from fear, but brave, too, for speaking out at all. “We can find the door on our own. Come on, Ambarys,” he added softly, “let’s go home.”

Ambarys had never been gladder to feel the frigid bite of winter wind on his face, for it meant he would soon be home, and he would end his day in a clean bed and a hot meal in his belly. Malthyr tugged a cloak around both their shoulders to provide them with some meager protection from the elements as they hurried down Windhelm’s narrow, labyrinthine streets to the dank alleys of the Gray Quarter. His relief was short-lived when felt the heavy, hopeless eyes of his neighbors taking in his bedraggled, broken appearance, and it occurred to him: this was why Ulfric had let him live. If the brashest and most outspoken among them could be broken, then what good could come from rebelling at all?

“I’m sorry,” he said senselessly to Revyn Sadri as they passed by where he stood, smoking, outside his door. Revyn only shrugged and blew a plume of smoke past his lips.

“I’m sorrier for you, brother,” Revyn said dryly, “that you thought this would end any other way.”

“You’re not helping, Revyn,” Malthyr snapped. Revyn ambivalently emptied his pipe into the filthy gutter, then slipped back inside his shop.

Malthyr let them both inside the New Gnisis Cornerclub. The lights had been doused, and the hearth was cold; Malthyr likely had needed to put them all out when he’d gone up to the Palace to collect Ambarys after his release. Still, it did no good to let the place remain so frigid and unwelcoming now. Ambarys gently removed the cloak from their shoulders and hung it up on a rack on the wall.

Nearby, Malthyr hovered with his hat in his hands again. “Ambarys,” he began softly.

Ambarys’s heart seized in his chest, and he closed his eyes. “Let’s just,” he interrupted, “get the cornerclub set to rights first.”

And they did. They lit the sconces again, bringing warm light back to dark, cobwebbed corners. They put firewood into the stove and kindled it, burning out the damp that had infused the air in their absence. Malthyr went up into the attic to fetch down the ledgers that had gone untended without Ambarys to ply them with his shrewd, mercantile mind, and over bowls of venison stew and a bottle of sujamma, they bent their heads to the task of bringing the club’s books up to date. The work was at once incredibly tedious and comforting, and Ambarys was glad to distract himself with it.

That night when they bedded down together as close to the heat of the stove as they could get without burning themselves, Ambarys gathered Malthyr into his arms and pressed his face into his hair. Malthyr’s fingers bore into the taut, sinewy muscles of his shoulders and rubbed the tense knots there until the tension was gone. Sighing, Ambarys tilted his face down and kissed the ridge of Malthyr’s nose, then his mouth. This, he knew, the Stormcloaks could never take from him. From them. This was theirs.

Malthyr threaded his fingers through the fine hair at the base of Ambarys’s neck. He tipped his head back enough so that Ambarys could see his dark eyes in the amber light from the stove. Just past the narrow angle of his shoulder, he glimpsed his old Legionnaire’s armor on its shelf against the far wall, collecting dust, but still serviceable.

Malthyr stroked his knuckles down his cheek. “Don’t give up.”

Ambarys covered Malthyr’s hand and laced their fingers together. “I won’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> A short work I started back in 2012 and, on impulse, decided to finish today. It is largely inspired by bits of trivia about Ambarys Rendar, owner of the New Gnisis Cornerclub in Windhelm, that I uncovered snooping through the TES wiki; e.g., Malthyr Elenil lives with him, and there's a suit of Imperial armor upstairs in the shop.
> 
> I had fun with this!


End file.
